Photoscape v3.3 - backing up probs

[kriskwery]

I've recently found, downloaded & used Photoscape - brilliant. BUT when I do my daily back-ups to an external hard drive (Maxtor) it reports a partial back-up failure & doesn't seem to recognise any of the pix I've manipulated. In trying to assess the problem I get a report in script with all sorts of stuff meaningless to me, inc "Not Supported/File skipped (backup of operating system files and folders ( those that have both system and hidden attributes) is not supported)".
Has anybody any idea what I am supposed to do now? I am not particularly skilled at this stuff and blindly back up regularly in the hope that all is there if ever I need it! However, I have now had TWO complete hard drive failures in the 8 yrs I've been using a home computer and am horrified I might lose stuff again.
Sorry, this is a bit like a "Dear Diary" entry!